One Thousand Needles
by shi-chan
Summary: Iruka dreams of a past, a promise he couldn't fulfill. He dreams of one of his greatest fear. Sometimes, even one's regrets and feelings is always buried underneath the underneath.


Warning: Gore, violence. Any misspellings or wrong grammar is unintentional. I am my own beta. I could have missed some stuff.

I do not own Naruto.

**ONE THOUSAND NEEDLES**

He was in his little wall-less house, comfortable on a cushion, papers scattered on his table, his tea cup long empty. The tea, he decides, has a funny after taste because he could feel his stomach twisting a bit and he wonders if maybe the tea leaves in his kitchen has gone bad. Or something.

Either way, he continues to correct his papers, reaching the end of the pile when a photograph slips. He remembers it, taken earlier that day, after shuriken target practice. It's a candid shot, with his new and growing favorite student Akira pointing and flailing with a shuriken and Iruka's hand on the top of his head, tongue sticking out and ruffling the boy's hair. It's a nice picture and he stares at it for a long time, the spell breaking because damn his stomach. It's starting to hurt more, like he swallowed a live porcupine.

He pays it no attention and stands up to the wall in his living room, where there's a cork-board filled with pictures with his students - birthdays, school plays, school graduations, festivals, summer camps (his favorite, because they're almost always wet from the summer showers or the lake), classroom shots and training field shots, art works, crayon drawings, paintings and other little crafts and trinkets hanging along the wooden frame. It's his memory wall and not just a collage of his students but also his peers, comrades and teammates. Colored tack in hand, he pins the new picture on the board, arranges it and tilts the picture of Konohamaru and Naruto (they're still so young here and Konohamaru is still missing his tooth) so that the new picture doesn't cover their faces.

Some pictures are old, some art paper yellowed with the years that went by but they're all intact. There's one picture of himself and his teammates, another picture of a candid shot during Sandaime's fiftieth office surprise birthday party covering the face of one of his teammates. Out of habit - because everyone is seen, everyone is clear and not covered, he wants to see all of them and no one should be hidden, damnit - he tilt's Sandaime's group picture to the side a bit, and he's there. He's standing, smiling, fingers held in a peace-gesture, Iruka under a pale arm, both of them sopping wet with their other teammate pointing and laughing at their appearances. They're all young, maybe about thirteen? Fourteen? Iruka remembers but tells himself he doesn't, so he doesn't remember ...

_"Oi, hold still 'Ruka and look that way!"_

_"I am looking that way, idiot!"_

_"The camera! The camera, not Miyo's tits!"_

_"H-Hey!"_

_"Hey!"_

Sandaime's picture slides back to its former place, covering rosy cheeks, silver hair and a smiling face that Iruka has no desire to remember now. Not now. The laughter is gone, and it's quiet in his head again.

"Idiot," he mutters to himself and flicks one of the dolphin charms hanging on the lower wooden frame of his cork-board, the little bell ringing as he heads for bed, too tired, too sleepy. He's asleep before his head hits the pillow, stomach ache forgotten. It's not so bad that he can't ignore it; it can't get any worse than that time where he thought that the juice in his fridge was still consumable.

But sleep does not last for long and he's curling against his stomach and remembering things again because of that - goddamn, fucking piece of ... just take it down and burn it already! - candid shot he saw earlier.

_"Ne, you'll always be by my side, right Iruka?" A finger jab._

_"Of course! You're my best, best friend!" A finger jab back._

_"Shinobi's honor promise?" A pale pinky._

_"Shinobi's honor promise!" A tanned pinky._

Fuck, his stomach _burns_.

Iruka sits up with a hiss, hand firmly pressing against his navel, fingers digging in to the skin and he's feeling _sick_. He was going to have to throw that tea out because he did not want another stomach ache and he -

He stops and he doubles over, breaking in a cold sweat, throat clenching. It's like having broken glass claw up his stomach, past his esophagus and out of his throat. And he's _gagging_, hacking out what felt like bile, what should have been bile, but his futon is stained red - red, red, like summer cherries, squished and squishy, wet and sticky - and more red spills from his mouth, coating his teeth in crimson. God, it was _disgusting_ and that tea -

Iruka's eyes widens and any wider and his eyes would have fallen out of their sockets. Because he's terrified, he's shaking, because there's something in his throat and it's wedged all the way in and fuck, it _hurts_. It _burns_.

_Panic._ Raw, shaking, panic wracks down his spine.

He does not hesitate to reach back with two fingers in to the insides of his bloodied throat and he tears up. He cries, because it's torture. He feels something, solid and thin and he yanks it out, doesn't bite back the half cry, doesn't bother to because it stops on its own. He's staring at the thing between his fingers, glinting under the moonlight that streams from the large window of his bedroom, small and silver, thin and sharp, coated in red; it's shaking in his grip because he doesn't understand it. He can't understand it.

It falls on his lap, in the middle of the blotted red spots on the futon. Iruka does not have the time to get up, to scramble for help, to ingest the medication he stocks up on in his bathroom because he's hacking up another one and it's agony. One needle, two needles, three, four, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, hundred, two hundred, three hundred - was that a piece of his throat? Was that a piece of his tongue? A tiny chunk of his gums?

Iruka cries, and cries because he's so scared he doesn't understand what's wrong with him and he can't speak. He can't make a noise. His throat is gone, beyond repair and the blood won't stop and it isn't a genjutsu. He tries to break it with trembling fingers and fickle chakra but no illusion breaks, his stomach is still churning, that live porcupine waging war with his stomach walls, more needles, so many needles, he lost count. The taste of blood and torn flesh is so thick and so iron-like that it makes him vomit out the sharp needles harder, cold sweat coating his neck, face and chest.

He spits one more needle out and he's tired, his vision is swimming, he can't see clearly through the tears but his lap his heavy with needles.

"Hurts, doesn't it?"

_What?_

There's laughter and he knows that voice, he remembers it even after so many years, and Iruka knows that he's not the least bit pleased. Did he escape? Did he -

"That's what you get, you didn't keep your promise."

_I did!_

"You chose him over me. Me! Your best friend!"

_I - I had to!_

"You lied, Iruka. You're a liar!"

_I - I'm not!_

He's singing, taunting and jeering like all those times when he's trying to piss Iruka off to get things his way. "Guilty, guilty, little dolphin is guilty!"

Was he? Really? He didn't lie, he broke nothing. He was not guilty! He wasn't feeling guilty, goddamnit! Because he had to save -

Iruka's on his back and greens eyes are looking down at him, one of the bloodied needles between his pale fingers. "You don't deserve anything. You never did. To go back on your word, you have no honor!"

_I'm so, so sorry!_

The needle went up, pale fingers flexing, silver hair glinting - he's a monster, no longer charming, or boyishly handsome and friendly or smiling, he's ugly, evil, cruel - just like the needle. Iruka's staring at it and finds himself trying to speak, to apologize, again and again because he could fix it, there's still hope, they can amend things, not all is lost and he wants to, he really really wants to -

_I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Let me fix it! Let me! I can! I can! I'm sorry!_

His vision swims and it's a different face - or faces - with messy silver hair, and mismatching red and coal eyes, thin lips pulled to a frown, and delicate gloved hands that grab him by the face, stretching his eye open, as wide as it can go. Iruka struggles and squirms and tries to get that gloved hand off him

_Let go! Let go! Get off! Get off!_

But he - no, **it** is strong. So strong that thrashing is useless.

_"Wrong, sensei."_

The needle comes down, and when Iruka screams, it's a wet squelching noise and his throat hurts too much even as **it** sings the pinky-promise-song and laughs and picks another needle; Iruka can see black on one side and the sneer in the other.

The scream is still silent and wet and sticky. This time it's all black and the song is louder ...

xxx

Iruka is on his side when his eyes snaps open, staring unseeingly at the table lamp on his night stand, at the dark room of the bedroom he shares with his -

"Iruka?"

"It's nothing, Kakashi. Go back to sleep."

A shift, an arm around his bare stomach and the man sleeps again, nose and forehead pressing against the back of Iruka's head. Iruka tries to sleep, tries to wash away the nausea that overcomes him and he thinks that his throat hurts because he's feeling a little thirsty. He tries to sleep but ends up staring at his lamp some more, blindly, unseeingly.

_Dreams can't hurt us, dreams can't hurt me._

He tries to close his eyes but he realizes that he's too afraid. So he listens, to Kakashi's breathing, to his heartbeat, to the pitter patter of the rain outside. There is very little else he can do. He tells himself Mizuki isn't Kakashi and that Kakashi is no mind reader. It becomes a mantra, an endless litany till the sun creeps over the horizon.

_Dreams can't hurt me. They're not real._

It becomes a mantra, an endless litany till the sun creeps over the horizon.

FIN

I wrote this for an RP but it seemed like it could work as a standalone piece. Just did some editing. This ... well, I dunno where it came from.

Err, yeah. Hmmm.


End file.
